Next generation BlackBerry phones to get Android app ‘player’

Bloomberg reports that the next wave of BlackBerry phones – no, not the Curve – will benefit from Android app compatibility.

Future smartphones from RIM are set to run on QNX, a new operating system that’s already found on the BlackBerry PlayBook, which will be able to run a proportion of Android’s currently richer app market.

Bloomberg explain that makers RIM are desperate to keep hold of customers who are tending toward the likes of the iPhone and Android handsets and their rich app catalogues.

In comparison, the BlackBerry World app store offers some very specific apps, but more mainstream games and utilities are still not quite there. An Android ‘app player’ was promised soon after the BlackBerry Playbook launch, but has still failed to appear. Despite promises that it would appear this summer, it’s now been pushed back into autumn.

An un-optimised, buggy preview version of the ‘app player’ was leaked in July 2011, but was missing core functions like a back button. The report adds that we’ll see the first of these QNX smartphones in “early 2012”.